Sunday Funnies: Scientology finally starts making its members superheroes!

We hope you’re enjoying your holiday weekend as we turn to our Sunday tradition of sharing with you some of the Scientology fliers and mailers our excellent tipsters have forwarded to us.

If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that most of these church communications are focused on fundraising. And if anything, the desperation for money has only gotten ramped up higher and higher. Members are implored to come down to events that are made to look as fun as possible, when really attendees are “regged” intensely — pressured, in other words, to give large sums even if they’ve given plenty already.

Former members have told us what kept them in the church so long, despite the intense fundraising, was the ultimate promise that someday they would attain superhuman powers. This is, after all, the goal of Scientology, to attain “OT” abilities and become able to manipulate the MEST universe (matter, energy, space, time) as just a spirit, a “Thetan” in L. Ron Hubbard’s parlance.

For that reason, we’re surprised to see that, in recent months especially, the church has been going with the “superheroes” theme for its fundraising parties. Isn’t that a little too close to home? In the following fliers, you’ll even see some of the folks dressed up as “Dianetics Man” and other Scientology-flavored comic characters.

We have two mailers for you in the superhero theme, one from Austin and the other from Kansas City. They not only parody Scientology’s quest for spiritual power, but also show how few people the church can get out to an event these days. The end days truly are upon us…

 
And here’s Kansas City…

 
We have never condoned, nor have we hindered, the efforts that some of our readers make in our comments section to coordinate their efforts to flag subversive Scientology ads posted at Craigslist. We’re just not involved, and our attorney wants to keep it that way.

However, we think we can safely offer up this latest Tony Chen e-mail which was forwarded to us by one of our great tipsters. Tony is the top dog of Scientology Craigslist spamming, and he admitted in a recent e-mail that the efforts by someone (hint, hint) to take down Craigslist ads has been having a major effect.

But how major? Hey, Tony, how many people are you actually roping in with that nationwide cyber-stalking?

Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014
From: Tony C
To: Cyber Dissemination
Subject: Craigslist starts

Dear Cyber Dissemination member,

Last week I had one first service start from Craigslist.

The week before that I had two.

I did a stat analysis recently. My number of Craigslist first service starts went up and down with the number of Craigslist ads we posted, which totally stood to reason.

I know it’s more challenging to post Craigslist ads nowadays, but it works when you are able to get the number ads up to a certain range. Call me if you need help with it. I have some tricks I can go over with you.

Tony Chen
PES River Park Mission
3825 Marconi Ave, Sacramento, CA 95821
(916) 519-5287

 
ONE new person roped in by Tony Chen last week. This planet will be cleared in no time!

Now, for our next item. We have to ask our readers who are former church members about this next item. Even when you were most involved, was it really possible to think this way, that a new building might set fire an entire state and sweep Scientology across the land? Wasn’t it always obvious that as a Scientologist, you were in a tiny minority? Help us understand…

 
We trust there was a great party last night on L. Ron Hubbard Way. We’d love some eyewitness accounts!

 
He’s back! It just doesn’t feel like a proper set of Sunday Funnies without hearing from our Fearless Leader in Scotland…

 
Ooh! Top Secret! That ought to get them interested…

 
How can you have a 4th of July picnic without an OT panel?

 
There’s a new push on to promote the Purification Rundown, the sauna-and-vitamins regimen for dummies who think sitting in a hot moist room will leach out the “toxins” from their body. In a smart bit of marketing, Scientology is trying to make the unscientific and risky procedure sexier with a new campaign — and it even includes special sportswear!

 
We hadn’t noticed this wrinkle before. As a Scientologist, you can become a “humanitarian” for forking over a certain amount of money in the form of donations. But now local orgs themselves can attain the status of humanitarian? You see how that works? “Come on, Bob, another two grand and you’re a humanitarian. And then another 5 grand will help the org to be a humanitarian. You want the org to be a humanitarian, don’t you? What are you going to tell your kids if the org can’t make it to humanitarian, Bob?” And it apparently takes 100,000 of something for the org to hit that level. Anyone know what units we’re talking about?

 
Erika went Clear, everybody!

 
And finally, ever notice that L. Ron Hubbard, despite supposedly writing millions of words of pure wisdom, is just about the most unquotable so-and-so you’ll ever encounter?

 
Thanks again to our great tipsters!

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 6, 2014 at 07:00

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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47

GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43

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